Madison Area Lyme Support Group

As people weary of being cooped up during a pandemic winter look forward to a summer outside, residents across the northeastern United States are once again confronted with a familiar virulent pathogen lurking in the woods and fields. Unlike coronavirus, however, this dangerous microorganism doesn’t float through the air—it enters the body through the bite of a tick.

Lyme disease has been a constant scourge since it was identified five decades ago on the Connecticut coastline, before spreading across the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. Caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi (and its cousin Borrelia mayonii), the disease has long baffled scientists with its strangely stealthy manifestations.

While Lyme can sometimes be diagnosed early from its telltale bullseye-shaped rash, it often goes unnoticed for weeks in a person before it starts leading to complications including arthritis and—in severe cases—attacks on heart and brain tissue. While it can often be resolved with antibiotics, some 10 to 20 percent of patients see infections persist, with fatigue, joint pain, and mental impairment lasting months and even years. Sometimes doctors who treat such long-suffering patients aren’t even able to definitively pinpoint Lyme as the cause. All of those complications make the mission of the new Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative even bolder: “Eliminate Lyme Disease by 2030.”  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Articles like these give me gray hair.

Points to consider:  Isn’t it sad when little has changed in 5 decades?  Hopefully the following comments will explain the ongoing logjam.

• The touted myth of 10-20% with persistent symptoms is FALSE. It’s more like 60%.
• The jury’s out on whether it can ‘often be resolved with antibiotics’. I would argue that perhaps some can but nobody’s been studied for any length of time, and relapses will be blamed on something else by mainstream medicine and researchers due to the CDD/IDSA/NIH juggernaut.
• The ongoing issue is pathogen  persistence. Until this is agreed upon, acknowledged, and acted upon, we are going nowhere.
• Many of the pedestalized Tufts pioneers are part of The Cabal which has myopically fixated on the acute stage of Lyme, ignoring a large subset of patients, which has caused untold suffering.
• Researcher Linden Hu has developed a technique to give mice vaccine-infused food which contains a virus, which he insists is safe.  Thankfully the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture is leery.
• Hu has also proposed putting an antibiotic into mouse food at bait stations. The article admits that the science it’s all based on was done more than a decade ago. This project was also stalled due to fears of antibiotic resistance.
• Hu and Telford just received nearly 4 MILLION from the NIH to study a more narrow-spectrum antibiotic. Please keep that dollar amount in mind when you read the article.
• Telford states the most important species carrying borrelia is the white-footed mouse, but even his wife (a researcher) recognizes dogma based on assumptions and notes that shrews, voles, squirrels, chipmunks, and of course birds play a large role.  Further, reptiles are involved.
• Half-way through it becomes clear they are pushing another Lyme vaccine. Telford was involved with Steer back in the early 1990’s with LYMErix which caused Lyme-like symptoms and was shelved.  Telford appears indifferent to this fact and states it was 80% effective – which is quite reminiscent of the current COVID injections claiming to be 90% effective but are less than 1% effective when absolute risk is taken into account.  There have also been thousands of reports of deaths and severe reactions.
• Telford has gone on record dismissing concerns between Lyme and US government biowarfare research. Telford also takes every opportunity to correct doctors (using antiquated & biased science) who depart from the CDC/IDSA accepted narrative. This is also being experienced with COVID.  Telford attacks anyone defying the accepted narrative.  He discredited Kris Newby’s book but never actually read it.
  • Interestingly, Telford teaches biosecurity and has written many studies about tularemia, a known bioweapon.
  • Telford wast he director of a bio-level 3 lab in Groton, Massachusetts, that works on dangerous, tick-borne diseases on the government’s select agent list.
  • Telford is funded by the NIH and the military-industrial complex.
• The article states once Lyme is diagnosed it’s usually treatable with doxycycline in 10-14 days.  FALSE! This myth is also causing untold suffering and needs to be terminated, as well as the FALSE Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS).
• Hu and Klemen Stole of Wadsworth Institute just obtained over 3 MILLION from NIH to study how genetic mutations affect the body’s ability to develop tolerance for borrelia.  Please also keep this monetary figure in mind while reading the article.
• While they admit borrelia uses ‘clever tricks’ to skirt the immune system’s defenses (from disarming leukocytes and utilizing rapid antigenic variation, to invading blood vessel walls so it can take root anywhere in the human body) they can not seem to imagine it persisting or relapsing. (A bizarre disconnect) 
• Tanja Petnicki-Ocwieja, also at Tufts, just obtained $160,000 from Global Lyme Alliance to look into ozone intravenously (note the paltry amount compared to the others which is due to the fact the government funded NIH doesn’t want research on ozone which will interfere with Big Pharma profit).  So far her findings show it calms the immune response.  Once again the issue of persistence crops up because there’s more going on than just an immune response in many patients.
• The statement is made that Lyme carditis is seen in less than 1% of patients.  This data was most probably taken from the CDC website which is notoriously wrong.  How can you know percentages on anything when the test for it misses anywhere from 70% to 86% of cases?  People are being misdiagnosed at alarming rates. Until they do autopsies on every carditis patient, percentages are a complete guess.
• While the article states practitioners need to validate suffering patients they essentially state the need to give them an alternate explanation other than Lyme disease for their suffering!   If they only knew how often this horrific advice is followed.
• And probably the worst part of the article (hard to judge as so much of it is atrocious) is the statement there is no clear treatment for long-term cases.  Unfortunately, this is true due to the fanatical polarization within public health and the research and medical communities who care more about profits than they do about patients.
• Recent work has shown longer treatment durations were associated with better treatment response; however, this hasn’t even caused a ripple in the research & medical world due to the fact it isn’t a double blinded, placebo controlled, randomized trial – Anthony Fauci’s favorite animal (when it suits his purpose).  
• Lastly, the article mentions former Tufts Medical Center doctor, Dr. Mark Klempner, now executive vice chancellor of MassBiologics at UMass Medical School, who has developed ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’ (PrEP), which is supposedly not a vaccine. Klempner not only has ties to biodefense but is behind research that is still being used to keep chronically sick Lyme/MSIDS patients from extended treatment. Klempner recruited Linden Hu. 

Who to believe?  Researchers receiving MILLIONS in grant money or sick patients losing their jobs?

 I’ll stick with the patients thank you.